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3. Exponential Energy – Electronic and computer components aren’t the only technology exhibiting exponential improvements in price and performance. Many alternative energy technologies are also becoming better, cheaper, and smaller. We saw dozens of new uses for solar power and improved storage batteries for charging other devices, in many cases without the need for cables and plugs.

At the smaller end, an explosion of new portable energy technologies are appearing to help keep our growing supply of rechargeable mobile devices and other electronics running for longer periods away from a plug.

In some cases, mobile rechargers are being embedded into smartphone and tablet cases, such as the Mophie Space Pack, which we were told carries up to three full charges for a smartphone and extra memory in a surprisingly thin case. Acoustic Research’s Zipstick, Phonesuit’s Flex Pocket Chargers, and similar products come in the form of lightweight attachments that can recharge device batteries on the go. Ningbo Jiye Electrical Co., Ltd from China offered a solar-powered smartphone charging case for as little as $15.

4. Driverless vehicles – There’s a great deal of buzz about driverless cars, following eye-opening experiments begun in 2009 by Google and others. In reality, automakers have been using technology to make vehicles more autonomous for years, including everything from anti-lock brakes to automatic parking.

Of course, calling them driverless cars is like calling the first automobiles “horseless carriages”—we still don’t even have a word for what is to come in driving automation. But whatever it is, it’s coming soon.

Here an impressive innovation we saw came from an incumbent, Mercedes-Benz, which demonstrated a completely automated vehicle that retains its stylishness. Rather than using a rotating laser range finder on the roof of the car as Google does, Mercedes’ demonstration vehicle relies on miniature cameras positioned around the vehicle, and can manage traffic lights, intersections, pedestrians and other vehicles.

As a company representative told us, the engineering of automated vehicles is not the issue. “From a hardware perspective,” he said, “it’s already there.” The real constraint now on expanding automated driving is legal. Governments around the world are grappling with appropriate new rules for testing and deploying these new technologies.

And the stakes are high. Advanced vehicle automation could result in far safer travel, reduced traffic, and greater energy efficiency, among other benefits.

Among other impressive developments in autonomous vehicles, Parrot demonstrated lightweight drone aircraft called MiniDrones and Jumping Sumos, which can be programmed, or rather choreographed, with remarkable precision. They’re expected to sell for under $300.

Today, most consumer drones are being sold as toys. But future applications in public safety, environmental monitoring, package delivery and agriculture, just to name a few, may be only a few years away.

5. Immersive Interfaces – Last year, in a suite far from the conventional floor, we got an early look at the Oculus Rift, a prototype of virtual reality gaming goggles that was launched only a few months before on Kickstarter. The company has continued to develop its technology, and a new 1080p OLED prototype, code-named Crystal Cove, won the official CES “Best of the Best” award as the consumer electronics product of the year.

Winning best of show with a prototype is quite an achievement, but that’s not the only indication that the makers of Oculus Rift are on to a true Big Bang Disruptor. Thanks to its open interface and developer tools, other companies are already building extensions and non-gaming applications for the goggles, creating an Oculus Rift ecosystem.

Middleware producer SoftKinetic, for example, has attached depth and gesture recognition cameras onto the Oculus Rift goggles, allowing the user’s hand motions to translate into real-time manipulation of objects in the 3D space. Intel is embedding SoftKinetic’s technology for what it calls RealSense, which could someday facilitate virtual design and other fine motor manipulations, including medical applications.

Among other advances in natural user interfaces we saw, the most promising include eye tracking technologies that allow users to work with computers without relying so heavily on their hands. Last year, for example, we met with the developers of Tobii, a Swedish company working on products that replace basic mouse functions with simple eye movements. Tobii had a much larger booth this year—and a modestly-priced development kit for third parties to build applications for their Tobii EyeX technology.

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Like Tobii and Veristride, many of our examples fall squarely into the early market experiment stage of Big Bang Disruption. That means many--perhaps most of them--will never make it to mainstream success. But even those that don’t succeed send a strong signal to incumbents of imminent disruption when some entrepreneur hits on the right combination of new technologies and business model.

That is, for incumbents who are listening. As the number of innovators working with new technologies continues to expand, that better include everybody.